NEW DELHI, June 23: Adjudicating the suspended Maharashtra Judicial Officer’s plea for quashing the POCSO case, a partial working day bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Manmohan termed the case ‘shocking’ and said given the daughter’s statement recorded by a magistrate under section 164 of criminal procedure code, “this is not a case for quashing by any standard.”
Counsel for the accused Judicial Officer attempted to term the POCSO cases lodged against him by his estranged wife as an attempt by her to prejudice the court against him in the pending case of domestic violence lodged by her.
The counsel said that though the estranged wife had lodged the domestic violence case against him in 2014, the year when he allegedly started molesting his daughter, not a whisper has been made in the DV case about the alleged molestation.
But Justices Mishra and Manmohan were unconvinced and dismissed his plea for quashing the FIR lodged in 2018. Thus, the Judicial Officer would not face trial in the case.
The minor daughter in her statement recorded by the magistrate narrated the ordeal she had to face for four years from 2014, when he was posted as Assistant Charity Commissioner at Bhandara and she was only 12 years old.
She narrated that her father used to grab her from behind whenever she was alone there & only after the mother decided to live separately with her daughters, one of whom was molested by him, that the girl spoke about her ordeal.
This is when she lodged the complaint under POCSO Act in 2018.
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